Privacy Policy

Version 1.2, 14 October 2026. This policy has been prepared for legal review.

This platform lets residents of Tunapuna report community issues to the Tunapuna Station Community Council. This policy explains, in plain language, what information we collect, how we use it, who can see it, how long we keep it, and the choices you have. We have tried to be honest about the things we cannot control as well as the things we can.

Who is responsible for your information

The Tunapuna Station Community Council is responsible for the reports submitted through this platform and is the data controller. Doyen Civic Solutions Limited, a company registered in Trinidad and Tobago, builds and operates the platform (CommunityIQ) on the council's behalf and acts as the data processor. These roles are being formalised in a written agreement between the council and Doyen Civic Solutions.

The choice you make when you report

Every time you submit a report on the website, you choose how you want to do it:

• Anonymously. Your name and phone number are never stored. This is enforced by our server, not only by the form, so an anonymous report cannot carry your details even by mistake. You still receive a tracking number so you can check the status of your report.
• Identified. You share your name and a phone number or email. You can also choose whether you agree to be contacted about your report. This lets the council follow up with you.

Reports made on WhatsApp are always anonymous. See the WhatsApp section below.

What we collect

For every report, whichever way you submit it, we store:

• The category and description of the issue.
• Any photos or video you choose to add.
• The location, if you choose to share it, either as map coordinates, a pin you drop, or a landmark or address you type in.
• The date and time the report was submitted, and the channel it came through (web or WhatsApp).
• The status of the report and its history, including notes added by staff.

If you report identified, we also store your name, the contact details you provide, and whether you agreed to be contacted. If you report anonymously, none of that is stored.

If you subscribe to community alerts, we keep your email address so we can send them. Every alert email has a link to unsubscribe at any time.

Photos, videos and location data

• Photos sent through the website: phones often attach hidden information to photos, such as the GPS location where the photo was taken and details about the device. This hidden information is removed in your browser, on your own phone or computer, before the photo is uploaded.
• Videos sent through the website: videos are uploaded exactly as recorded. A video may contain location data recorded by your phone. For a sensitive report, consider turning off location tagging in your camera settings before recording.
• Photos sent on WhatsApp: WhatsApp normally removes this kind of hidden information from photos it delivers, but we do not control how WhatsApp handles your files.
• Dropping a pin on the map: the coordinates of the pin are sent to our map provider, Mapbox, to look up the nearest street address.

Voice input

If you use the microphone button to speak your description, your browser's built-in speech service turns your speech into text. CommunityIQ never receives or stores the audio, only the text that appears in the box. Some browsers send the audio to their maker's own speech service to do this, under that company's policies.

Stopping spam and abuse

To stop automated spam, the website keeps a scrambled version of the internet address your connection comes from, for up to one hour. It is scrambled using a one-way, keyed method, so it cannot be turned back into the original address. It is never linked to your report.

Reporting on WhatsApp

Reports made on WhatsApp are always anonymous. Your phone number is used only to carry on the conversation while you make the report, and it is deleted when the conversation finishes. If a conversation is started but not finished, it is deleted after 24 hours.

Status updates by WhatsApp are your choice. After a WhatsApp report, we ask whether you want a message when it is acknowledged, in progress and resolved. Only if you reply YES do we keep your number, in a separate list that is not attached to the report and is never shown to council, police or agency staff. It is deleted as soon as the report is resolved, or after 90 days at the latest, and you can reply STOP UPDATES at any time to delete it sooner. If you report on the website, give a phone number and agree to be contacted, the same short updates may be sent to that number on WhatsApp.

When a report you are getting updates on is resolved, we ask on WhatsApp whether the problem is really fixed, with two buttons. Your answer helps us measure how often problems are truly fixed. If you say it is not fixed, a staff member reviews it before anything changes. To match your reply to the report we keep a scrambled fingerprint of your number, not the number itself, and discard it after 30 days.

The police may send a follow-up question about a crime or public safety report. If you agreed to be messaged, it reaches you on WhatsApp through CommunityIQ; it also appears on the report's tracking page, where anyone with the tracking number can read and answer it, so keep your tracking number private. The police never see your name or number through this, and answering is optional. Questions and answers are kept with the report as part of its record.

Meta, the company that owns WhatsApp, knows the number you message from. That is how WhatsApp works, and Meta keeps that information under its own policies.

What we do not control

There are layers beyond our platform that we do not control. If you use the website, your internet provider and our hosting company keep their own short-term records of the connection, the same as they do for every website you visit. We do not link these to your report. For the most privacy on a sensitive report, you can use a connection or a phone you do not normally use, and choose the anonymous option.

How we use your information

• To review your report and route it to the right place: the council, the Tunapuna Police Station, or the Tunapuna/Piarco Regional Corporation.
• To update the status of your report and, if you reported identified and agreed to be contacted, to follow up with you.
• To publish combined, anonymised figures, such as how many streetlight reports were made this month and how quickly they were resolved. These figures never identify you.

Who can see your report

The public. Reports about streetlights, drainage and flooding, illegal dumping, and other non-crime issues appear on the public map and activity feed as soon as they are submitted. They show only the category, the area or address you typed, the map position if you shared one, and the status. They never show your name or contact details.

Crime and public safety reports never appear publicly. They are seen only by the council and the Tunapuna Police Station. You can check their status privately using your tracking number.

Council administrators and members can see all reports, including the name and contact details on identified reports, so they can manage and follow up on them.

Officers at the Tunapuna Police Station see your name and phone number only if you chose to identify yourself and agreed to be contacted. If you reported anonymously, or identified yourself but did not agree to contact, the station never sees who you are.

The Tunapuna/Piarco Regional Corporation receives reports it needs to act on, such as drainage and infrastructure. It is never sent your name or contact details, whichever way you reported.

Alert emails sent to staff contain only the tracking number, category and area. They never contain the description or who made the report.

Vehicle number plates and the police Watch List

The Tunapuna Police Station can keep a Watch List of vehicles of interest, recorded by number plate and description. To support this, the system uses an automated text-recognition service to read text that is visible in report photos, such as number plates. Reports from the last 7 days are checked against the Watch List. Any matches are visible only to authorised station officers and council administrators. They are not shown publicly.

Service providers

We use the following companies to run the platform. They handle information only to provide their service to us.

• Supabase: Database and file storage for reports, photos and videos. Servers in the United States.
• Netlify: Hosts the website.
• Cloudflare: Bot protection on the report form, and routing for the website address and email.
• Mapbox: Maps. When you drop a pin, the map coordinates are sent to Mapbox to look up a street address.
• Google Cloud Vision: Reads text that is visible in report photos, such as number plates.
• DeepL: Translates report descriptions between English and Spanish so staff can read them.
• Meta (WhatsApp): Carries messages for reports made on WhatsApp.
• Resend: Sends alert emails to staff, which contain only the tracking number, category and area, never the description or who made the report. Also sends community alert emails to people who subscribe.
• Sentry: Error monitoring, so technical faults can be found and fixed. Session recording is turned off.

Some of these providers store or process information outside Trinidad and Tobago, including in the United States.

How long we keep your information

• Contact details (name, phone number or email) on identified reports are deleted automatically 90 days after the report is resolved or closed, and in any case 12 months after the report was made, even if it is still open.
• Report content(category, description, location, photos, videos and status history) is kept as the council's record, for community planning and accountability.
• The history of changes to each report, showing who changed what and when, is kept and cannot be edited.
• WhatsApp phone numbers and the scrambled internet address are kept only for the short periods described above.

Your rights

• You can ask what personal information we hold about you.
• You can ask us to correct personal information that is wrong.
• You can ask us to delete your contact details. If you reported anonymously, there is no name or contact detail for us to delete.

We aim to respond to every request within 30 days. To make a request, contact the council using the details at the end of this page. We may need to confirm who you are before acting on a request, for example by asking for the tracking number of your report.

We intend to handle personal information in line with the Data Protection Act, 2011 of Trinidad and Tobago. This policy is a plain-language explanation of our practices and is not legal advice.

Children

Please do not submit reports that identify children, including names, photographs, or details that could identify a minor. If a report needs to mention a child for safety reasons, the council handles it with extra care and keeps it protected.

Security

Information is encrypted while it travels over the internet and while it is stored by our database provider. Staff portals require a login, and each partner can see only what its role allows.

Changes to this policy

We will update this policy as the platform develops. The version and date at the top show when it was last changed.